They sold it all, my parents, the proprietors of the Sears catalog store in Monte Vista, near the center of the San Luis Valley.

From sofas to screwdrivers, Sears laid it all out there before you with color pictures and detailed descriptions. People called in from miles around to order clock radios, silverware and saddles.

My dad used to proclaim, tongue-in-cheek, “If Sears doesn’t have it, you don’t need it.” Of course, Sears didn’t sell any food, except some hard candy and sausage at Christmas time. Still, we were pretty much a living example of his maxim, since everything in our house — from socks to televisions — came from Sears.

Some spring mornings, the postmaster would call us at home to let us know that livestock had been delivered that morning. Sometimes, it was a crate of little chicks, peeping softly.

Once, it was a box of honeybees caught in a spring blizzard during shipping. Many bees had died, and I painted sugar water on the cage for the surviving bees, watching for signs of life from the little box that held the queen. Toward the end of the day, it became clear that the bees were failing, and the queen wasn’t going to make an appearance. The customer got his money back, of course.

My parents knew it all, too. They’d thumbed every glossy page so much that they could flip right to the spot you needed. They could tell you all about the washing machines; they kept a tape measure handy to measure your size. They could look on their fancy microfiche machine and determine the name of the gizmo on your vacuum cleaner that you needed to replace.

Every day, they mailed an envelope full of handwritten order forms, and in about a week, they’d call you to tell you your order was ready. Except if it was Christmas and you wanted to keep it a secret. At Christmastime, the wall of their office was papered with notes: “If Nancy Smith’s order comes in, it’s OK to tell Mr. Smith about the bike, but DO NOT tell him about the fishing rod.”

Even though they were part of a megacorporation, they were still a mom-and-pop operation, grabbing bites of a sandwich at lunchtime between customers, working six days a week, doing inventory on New Year’s Day. They never got much more than 200 miles from home because someone always had to be back to watch the store.

In the mid-’80s, Sears introduced an innovation: the teletype machine. Now they could type in the orders, and receive the merchandise three or four days later.

Of course, other retailers had innovations of their own. Big boxes were setting up in small towns, and people were thinking about selling stuff directly to the consumer on this thing called the Internet.

A few years later, a message came from corporate: “We regret to inform you that we are ceasing all catalog operations.” And so they were notified of the demise of the last general-purpose catalog operation, and — not incidentally — their livelihood.

Of course, this is the way of the world, and especially of the United States in modern times. Things change, and the things you were good at are being done by someone — or something — else.

In their time, Sears and Roebuck had done the same, introducing their new catalog and taking away the livelihoods of merchants across the nation.

And yet, I can’t help but ache for the people who were so good at their jobs for so long, only to be replaced before they were done. A small town needs a place where the merchants know their merchandise. A place where you can get someone to explain how the washing machine works, or to order gizmos so you can fix your own vacuum cleaner.

There’s been way more than enough written about Donald Trump’s battle with kneeling football players — especially with a major crisis underway in Puerto Rico — but one thing really does bother me that’s been revealed during this brouhaha: the extent to which many Americans have accepted the anti-democratic and false equivalence of patriotism and the military.